Grassroots Fund Raising Requests, Questions and Ideas
Back to Grassroots Fund Raising in North America Home Requests URGENT: Effective 'webpage for donations' needed : The administration at CMU will be putting up a webpage for donations for earthquake relief on its website. Does anyone have a well-designed page that does the job (ie, convince first-time webpage visitors that this is worth donating to) well? Please respond asap! :'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' ---- Questions How much have we managed to raise? : Can people keep some sort of ballpark figure of how much was raised at your institution? Doesn't need to be accurate, doesn't need to include private donations, maybe just how much was given to a public request. This way we can all know how the overall effort is going, and it can possibly also boost morale. People will need to spend hours and hours of their time at booths/tables, and only if they know it's worth it will they think about doing it. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) : :'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' : McGill Pakistan Student Association, Montreal, Canada- $16,000 and counting - The Canadian Government will also match all Canadian donations made to a Canadian registered NGO. http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/AllDocIds/A4300ADC297E3756852570980068385B?OpenDocument Where is the money going? : What institutions are you promoting? What success have you had with different institutions? I heard that at one place people were very hesitant to donate to Edhi, since they'd never heard of it, but were very happy to donate a lot to the Red Cross. Whatever preferences we may have as fund raisers with respect to one specific organization being more 'worthwhile' than another to raise funds for, I think we're all happy to know that more funds are going to the cause in general than less. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) :* Mills College's proceedings will be going to The Citizen's Foundation. (Fiza Asar) :* PSA - McGill University proceedings will primarily be going to The Edhi Foundation. When we tell people that it is the most trusted NGO in Pakistan and ESPECIALLY that it is a Canadian-registered charity for which the Canadian government is matching funds, thats usually enough to win them over. :*'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' ---- Ideas Short 3 minute documentary summarizing the catastrophe : Does anyone have the footage and skills to make a 3 minute video giving a very quick summary of everything that's happened in the region, as well as the ongoing relief efforts, and answers the question "if I donate, where will my money go?" If there are people who have skills in film editing who need footage, and people who have lots of footage, but need film editors, please say so in a paragraph beneath this question. If you need webspace to transfer huge files over, let me know -- I have access to lots of webspace. I believe this can be very useful in terms of putting an initial hi-quality video that summarizes information, which people in the US can then send to their non-Pakistani colleagues to forward virally. A lot of people didn't watch the footage on TV over the weekend, and now the story isn't as "hot" as it was earlier. We can keep it alive in the public's imagination, but we need a well produced, mini documentary that explains everything a potential donor will want to know. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) Focus on high ticket item "discretionary funds" : Focus on "discretionary funds". A large number of Muslims are going on Haj and/or Umra during the next three months. Everyone who is going to Umra MUST reconsider, and everyone who has already performed the obligatory Haj MUST reconsider as well. The funds are much better spent helping earthquake victims in South Asia, and other places where human beings (NOT JUST MUSLIMS) are in need. Liaquat Ali liaquat222@yahoo.com (http://www.qaiu.org) Write to your Deans: :A girl I know at Harvard School of Public Health wrote to the Dean about not having anything on the Harvard School of Public Health webpage on the earthquake. It was quickly revised and now they have added something about it. Perhaps we can all write to our respective universities?